1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an apparatus and a method for applying indicia and decoration to generally cylindrical articles, more particularly, the application of indicia or decoration from metallic or pigmented leaf by hot stamping or the application of preprinted transfer decorative designs by heat transfer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Currently, many articles are decorated or have indicia applied to their surfaces by means of hot stamping using a roll leaf foil and a heated die carrying the appropriate decoration or indicia which transfers that portion desired from the roll leaf foil to the article being decorated. Roll leaf hot stamping foil generally consists of a carrier strip of plastic, for example, a polyester film, onto which various release, protective, and adhesive coatings are applied, including the application of of a vacuum metallized layer or a pigmented layer, e.g., aluminum, gold pigment or silver pigment.
In the process employing transfer decoration, the particular decorative design desired is applied at intervals to a carrier tape or foil, again a suitable plastic film or paper carrier may be used. The design is created by conventional rotagravure printing techniques, silk screening, and/or other well known design creating techniques. The heat transfer decoration is applied to the article being decorated by impressing a hot surface on the back of the carrier tape causing the release coating to disengage the preprinted decoration and heating the decorative indicia to a temperature sufficient to fuse the adhesive coat on the rear face of the label to the article being decorated.
Each of the foregoing methods of decoration are finding increasing use in decoration of many articles, in particular, they have found widespread use in the decoration of cylindrical containers for consumer products such as bottles, tubes, vials, cosmetic stick cases and numerous other cylindrical or semicylindrical or noncylindrical articles. Heretofore, there have been developed numerous methods and apparatuses for hot stamping or heat transfer decorating of generally cylindrical articles such as plastic bottles. One example of a hot stamping apparatus which has found extensive commercial use which utilizes a turret mechanism for feeding the bottles into a split mold type die holder for foil hot stamping is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,751,701. One of the disadvantages found in the machine described in the foregoing patent is the necessity of providing a preformed, split mold die holder which encases the article to be decorated and requires the roll leaf foil to be fed through the split die. The necessity of having a different split die holder for each different size or shape of bottle to be decorated adds to the complexity and expense of decorating different size and style bottles. Additionally, the bottles must be manually oriented and attached to the turret mechanism on this type of apparatus in order that the parting line of the bottle, in the instance where a cylindrical or generally cylindrical bottle is being decorated, is oriented so that the hot stamp indicia will not cross either of the horizontal split mold parting lines present on the outer cylindrical surface of the blow molded plastic bottle. This hot stamping machine also requires the use of large hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders and linkages for closing the split die carriers and the use of high pressure air for expanding the bottle against the foil and heated die to make a good transfer of the indicia on the die through the foil onto the plastic bottle.
Other patents exemplifying the art wherein rotary feed mechanisms are utilized to deliver plastic articles to either hot stamp foil or transfer label carrier decorating strips and their associated dies are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,981,432; 3,058,514; 3,411,439; and 3,718,517. Many of the foregoing decorating devices are limited in the size or shape, or both, of container which they are capable of decorating, some being applicable only to a particular shape and size of container. Other machines exemplified in these patents are extremely complicated mechanically and have limitations as to the amount of surface decoration that can be applied to plastic articles such as cylindrical plastic bottles. Additionally, some of these decorative applying machines do not provide positive orientation of the article being printed whereby printing across the parting lines of blow molded plastic bottles is avoided.
Therefore, it can be seen that there is a need for a hot stamping or transfer carrier decorating machine and method which overcomes many of the problems numerated above that are found in presently used devices.